The Top 10 Tools For Monitoring The Success Of Your Website

!b>1 Google Analytics

Google Analytics has become the preferred option among frëe statistics programs. Like any other stats program, Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors, and page views, referral sources, entry and exit pages, and more. Unlike most other programs, Google Analytics includes the ability to track and monitor pay-per-clíck (PPC) campaigns. Other useful information includes the geographic location of your visitors, their internet connection speed, and their screen resolutions. You can sign up for Google Analytics at:

2 Google Webmaster Tools

Want to know how the largest search engine in the world sees your website? Google's Webmaster Tools will give you loads of information such as the pages that are indexed, errors found by the Googlebot (dead links), your search engine rankings for specific search phrases, your anchor text on inbound links, internal and external link data, and robots.txt and sitemap data.

By knowing how Google sees your site you will find some basic items that you'll need to change in order to reach your maximum potential in search engine traffíc. You can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools at:

3 SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool

SEOmoz is one of the leading search engine optimization (SEO) firms and their website provides a wealth of information through their blog, articles and tools. Their Page Strength Tool shows you the "relative importance and visibility" and the "potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search engines." SEOmoz provides a quick way to get a basic look at the strength of your page. The Page Strength Tool can be used at:

4 Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer

Sitening is another leading SEO firm with several valuable tools on their website. The SEO Analyzer differs from SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool in that it checks the internal structure of your site to determine how well it is constructed (in terms of search engine optimization). The structure of a website is the framework for a good SEO campaign, and Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer will help you to build the right framework. Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer can be found at:

5 Mike's Marketing Tools

MikesMarketingTools.com has two tools that every webmaster should use regularly. The Search Engine Rankings Tool will show you where your site ranks in several of the top search engines for a specific word or phrase. You can save time by using this tool instead of visiting each search engine and clicking through the search engine results pages to find your website.

The Link Popularity Tool will quickly show you how many inbound links each search engine recognizes for your site. Inbound links are a major factor in search engine rankings and each search engine recognizes a different number of links. From this tool you can also clíck through to see the specific pages that are linking to you. To use these tools visit:

6 Summit Media's Spider Simulator

The spider simulator shows you "how a search engine reacts to your pages and what can be done to boost your usability." Search engine spiders see web pages much differently than human visitors do. A page may look attractive and well-designed to a human visitor, but a search engine spider may not be able to find what it is looking for. This page is a great tool to assure you that your site is built for maximum search engine results. The spider simulator can be used at:

7 SelfSEO Page Speed Checker

Your average website visitor will have a very short attention span. To have the best chance of making a positive first impression on new visitors your page must load quickly enough that they do not leave right away. SelfSEO has a Page Speed Tool that shows you how long your page takes to load. The tool allows you to enter multiple pages to chëck at one time. It is a good idea to compare the load time of your page against pages from several other websites. Try entering your homepage and the homepage of several of your competitors. If your page loads considerably slower than the others, try to make the file smaller by reducing the number and size of images or by cleaning up the coding. The Page Speed Tool can be used at:

8 Dead Links Checker

Having dead links on your website can frustrate visitors and damage your search engine rankings. However, checking all the links on your site manually is not realistic. Fortunately there are a number of tools online that will automate the process. The W3 Link Checker will crawl through your pages and report which links are broken. To use this tool visit:

9 GoogleRankings.com

GoogleRankings.com will show you which words and phrases appear most frequently on your website throughout the text of the page, title, headings and meta tags. This is a useful tool to be certain that your pages are optimized for the words and phrases that you are targeting.

10 FeedBurner

If you publish a blog, FeedBurner's service is a must have. Feedburner will provide you with statistics regarding your blog's feed and you can give your readers the option to subscribe by email instead of RSS. There are a number of other features that you can read about at FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can always see how many subscribers you have and how many of them are clicking through from your feed to your site.

Ten Search Engine Optimisation Mistakes

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not something performed as a blanket approach to website development, it is an individual set of actions performed page by page to suit that page's particular goals and SEO needs. I like to break up a clients website into specific and important pages based on the keyword terms we have identified through research and then write the first few pages to suit those terms. We associate page titles, page file names (buy-blue-widgets.html), H1 tags, description and keyword Meta tags and in page content to tell the story that match those identified keywords. It is also important to ensure your pages are W3 compliant and have no errors.

I have compiled a list of some of some common Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mistakes.

1. Bad Titles. Titles are the most important thing about a webpage. Search engines spiders see the title on your page first and they make a general assessment about it based upon this. They scan the page and make sure the content of the page matches the title and then assign rankings based upon these matches and how they best fit. The title tag is the best way to inform the search engine what your page is about, and they play an important part in ranking if used properly. Placing your main identified keywords in the title and ensuring to obey the rule of leftward and stemming is vital - leftward rule, the closer the word to the left of the sentence the more important it is, stemming is where words can be associated but with words in-between i.e.: Great Blue Widgets when stemmed would allow Great Widgets. It is important to ensure your title matches your page content, description and Meta keywords and in unique for your website. Every page title and content should be unique otherwise is will be ranked supplemental.

2. Filename of the page. It is important if you are using dynamic websites like Joomla or other content management systems that a search engine friendly URL translator is installed. Because I use Joomla every day I will describe what I mean relating to Joomla. In Joomla (and most other dynamic websites) URL's like the normal Joomla URL "index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listcats&cat_id=1766&Itemid=35" drive the website. The problem with these URL's is that they are unintelligible by humans and also by search engines. Installing a search engine friendly URL component will change these pages to something more meaningful and also including your keywords in these page names can help with SEO. The newly transformed search engine friendly URL would look like this "buy-blue-widgets.html". If you do not have a dynamic website then ensuring your page name is short, to the point and contains your main keywords for that page maybe with a call to action like "buy" and "blue widgets".

3. Duplicate or Bad Content. Ensuring your content is unique and relevant is vital in SEO success. Often websites just duplicate content or bring in plagiarized content from other websites. It is my experience that these websites fail dismally in search engine rankings. Write some decent and unique content or maybe search online and find someone who can actually write you decent unique content for a fee. Make it good, friendly and unique content that people will want to link to. If you are listed in the supplemental index of Google then making sure you titles, descriptions, Meta keywords and on page content is unique is the only way to drag them out of the supplemental index.

4. No Links. Having covered off a few of the on page most important SEO tips we now look at links, which are an off page SEO concept. For each person or website that links to your website it is a vote for your site. If the website that links to yours has a high pagerank itself then it carries more weight. Simply having good keywords, titles and text on your page is only part of SEO. Just because you created a unique and perfectly optimized webpage does not mean you will automatically gain a decent pagerank for that page. In order to ensure SEO success you have to create incoming links - this is probably the hardest part of search engine optimization because you are effectively selling your pages all over the Internet. One way to gain instant (within a few weeks) links is to pay for text advertising - A search on Google will uncover some of the best text linking services. Link exchanges are bad because for every vote you get you are giving one away and if you happen to link to a "black listed" site then Google will penalize you significantly. One way links are the ultimate in SEO link campaigns so seek out directories (either paid or free, you need to evaluate), post in forums, write articles and submit them and ask other friendly webmasters if they can help you out with a link. The best way to gain links is to have unique content that other people actually want to link to.

5. Incoming link anchor text. Having pointed out how important it is to gain incoming links it is now important to also point out that the text those links are anchored to is important also. The text should be targeted at your main keywords and the page they point to should have those keywords as relevant and prominent also. The website you link from should be relevant to your website. So, as an example I own a web design company in Melbourne, Australia so I gain links from web hosting providers and/or open source Joomla sites in or around my region. Getting 1000 links from a casino related website will serve no benefit to my website and will not make it rank higher for "web design" keyword search terms. Use professional common sense when gaining links.

6. Bad Internal Page Links. We return to on page factors that you can work on within your website. It is important to make sure that the anchor text linking to pages within your own website is relevant to the target page. Make sure the title tag is filled in also for each link. You have the greatest control over links from within your own web site so make sure they are relevant and that link title and the on page copy match the main keywords of the target page.

7. Live links. Using some external tools like the link checker that W3 Org offer is good. I suggest harnessing as many tools as you can to ensure all of the links on your website are live, working and not sending people to 404 error pages. It is also important to check and make sure your page markup, or html, xhtml, is valid so W3 also offer a tool to check this. Make use of both of these freely available tools.

8. Impatience. Search Engine Optimization is not a short term task. It is one of an ongoing refinement after refinement and hour after hour of working on your website. Producing unique content, checking it, validating, listing and checking the search engines and making sure they have it listed correctly. Do not think for one second that you can optimize your site thoroughly ever and do not ever think that just because you are number one for a search term that it will indefinitely stay that way. Search Engine Companies are always changing their ranking and rating systems and coupled with this there are always other people out there gunning for your top spot. Keep looking to improve and learn more and don't sit back and wait for others to take your top spot, be proactive, seek out new content, links and keep ahead of the curve.

9. Keyword selection. This is proving to be a very common mistake among beginners to SEO. Often people base their own keyword selection on what they *think* is right but is this what people actually search for when they are looking for your product or service? Often the answer to this questions is no. It is an important step to do the correct keyword research and ensure you have the right keyword list before you optimize any pages with them. Using Overture, Google Adwords and some other paid keyword tools like WordTracker (the default standard in Keyword Finding) are vital to success in finding good keywords. It is important to localize your target market and figure out what they are actually searching on when they are looking for products or services that you offer. Do the research and be as specific as possible while still being broad enough to capture some high keyword traffic.

10. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing. If you sell "Blue Widgets" then every page of your site does not need to have "Blue Widgets" in the title, description and Meta tags. Try and be objective and analyze you website. Focus pages on a specific group of keywords you have identified from the keyword list. Sometimes finding niche markets locally first can be best. So, as an example, "Buy Blue Widgets Australia" or "Buy Blue Widgets Melbourne". These would be examples of good second or even third tier search keyword phrases but you can make some good sales with these niche terms because the searcher is targeting buying these items.

These are not the be-all and end-all of Search Engine Optimization mistakes but I have found these to be the main mistakes made by my clients prior to Kanga Internet being involved. Good luck and I wish you all the best with your SEO efforts.

Worst Mistakes To Avoid In Website Construction

Website design and construction is one of the core business activities that can make or break your business. A well-designed website will always attract more number of customers to your website by bringing in high quality traffic and volume to your website with greater revenue potential.On the other hand, poor website construction can ruin all your efforts of promoting your business online. It can put your business reputation at stake and spoil all your future business prospects if you neglect this important aspect.Top 5 mistakes to avoid in website construction-Bad colour schemesOne of the most important things to avoid in website construction is to have a bad combination of colour schemes and background which can be simply distracting to the users.Never use too loud and dark colours that feel like screaming at the visitors and creates confusion in their minds. It is preferable to have dark coloured text with a light background for creating a better visual effect.-Poor quality contentt is a really a big turn-off to have a content that is so difficult to read and understand with lack of clarity. If the sentences are clubbed together and paragraphs are too long, then it can easily drive away your visitors.Instead, create a content which carries more useful information for the visitors in an interactive manner. Make it more readable and keep the sentences short so that it is easy for them to read and follow.-Spelling mistakes and grammatical errorsIt is necessary to avoid bad spelling mistakes and punctuation errors in your website construction. It leaves a bad impression on the minds of the visitor and reflects carelessness on your part for overlooking such minute details which can make a lot of difference to your business.Always spell-check the entire content and if you find any grammatical mistakes or punctuation errors, make sure you correct them accordingly during website construction.-Badly designed layoutIt is definitely annoying to find a website that is filled with so much of unnecessary details leaving little space for the user to breathe! In other words, it is sure to cause lot of distraction to the user while trying to digest too much of available information.Never go overboard with website construction by designing pages that have no spaces left between the text and the graphics. -Poor navigation facilitiesThe main aim of website construction is to provide easy search and navigation facilities to the visitor while browning your website. But what is the use if this purpose gets defeated with lot of error pages, too many broken links and ads repeatedly popping up in between?The visitor is sure to lose his patience and get distracted by these things and go on to some other site. If you do not want this to happen, then you need to pay attention to website construction with good and easy navigation facilities Also, keep a check on the links to see that they work with regular maintenance.

Social Networking in SEO

Firstly let’s think about social networks generally and what their aims are. The best way to think about this is that they are similar to search engines where they want to make the best content available to users. However the value of the content is determined by the popularity from its members and not from a mathematical algorithm. For examples the articles with the largest number of diggs will find themselves on the front page of Digg.com.I hear you asking, how can this benefit my business? Well let’s think about what social networks can bring you, firstly they can bring valuable exposure and so increasing traffic to your site. They also can bring more back links to your site and so helping to improve your search engine ranking which in turn will bring more traffic to your site, which is the aim of the game.Now I bet your thinking, how can I take advantage of these opportunities? Well it is very simple really and below are the main steps to using social networks to improve the profile of your business:1.Research the sites you want to use. There are the obvious ones in MySpace, Facebook and Digg but there may also be some that are business specific and industry specific.2.Once you have decided on your sites then you will need to set up a profile. Make sure this includes as much interesting information on your company as possible and includes a link back to your website.3.Now you need to make connections. Firstly start by finding old friends from school, university and previous jobs. It is also a good idea to search for people that are interested in areas that are related to your business and try and build relationships with them.4.Get yourself seen. A good way to do this is to go to Forums on your selected sites and join in discussions. If people are having problems that you can help with make every effort to help them, remember to include a link to your site. This will not only increase the validity of you and your business but will also increase your connections on these sites.5.Update your profile regularly. Many social networking sites will send a notice to your friends if your profile has been updated and as people are naturally nosey many will come to see what you have done which will increase the coverage you get.6.Send out announcements to your friends. If you have some company news or you have a special offer it might be worth letting all your friends know about it, this may bring you valuable business. Remember though be reasonable with this, if you are continually sending out notices and leaving information for friends they will rapidly become annoyed and disinterested which may undo all the hard work you have done.ConclusionSocial networking is a vital component to any online marketing campaign and it should be included but not overused. The best thing about using social networking is that you get advertising for free so if only 1% of the people in your network use your services or buy your products you will still have an amazing return on investment. Forget the power of social networking at your peril.